Thursday, February 19, 2015

The world of marketing remains a bit of a mystery for many legal
professionals. We know enough about it that many of us become
do-it-ourselfers for our websites, blogs and even our branding.

Nonetheless, there is much we can learn from true marketing professionals.

To that end, I have the pleasure today of introducing the first in a series of videos on Marketing for Lawyers and Legal Professionals I’ve done with Sandra Bekhor of Bekhor Management and Toronto Marketing Blog. Sandra’s firm provides marketing and practice management services nationwide to lawyers and other professional practitioners.

In this installment, Sandra discusses marketing for lawyers and
provides 5 tips on taking your firm’s marketing endeavours to the next
level:

Here are Sandra’s key tips from the video:

1. Track where your client enquiries are coming from.

Generate data on what’s working for your firm today by asking your
intake staff to ask new clients how they became aware of your firm and
by including a question on your intake questionnaire that asks this same
question. And, of course, remember to thank your referral sources.

2. Analyze your marketing budget (and spend wisely)

Be aware of how much you are investing in each of your marketing
initiatives over the course of the year, and determine which of those
initiatives are delivering a good return. If an initiative isn’t
working, discontinue it. If you are seeing success, consider how to
extend and build on that success.

3. Decide what you want your marketing to generate for you, and use marketing to shape the practice you intend to build.

Consider the “80/ 20 rule:” 20% of your practice drives 80% of
revenue. Decide what you want more of, and direct your marketing
efforts toward those outcomes. Develop a sense of who your “ideal”
target client is, and target those clients.

This applies to each individual lawyer. Take a look at your practice – the kind of work you are doing and the kind of work you’d like to be doing. Focus your marketing efforts on reshaping your practice to align with your professional aspirations and goals.

4. Develop a plan

After analyzing what has already been working, deciding where you
want to get to and establishing your budget, you will have compiled much
necessary information to feed and direct your law firm’s marketing
plan.

While there are many steps to getting there, ultimately your marketing plan is an action plan.
It tells you what projects you should be working on – develop a logo
or tagline, expand your engagement on social media, arrange speaking
engagements, or update your website, as examples.

It will likely include marketing activity that the entire firm will
participate in, as well as personal level activities that are customized
to each lawyer’s strengths and interests.

If a stated goal is to open x new files in a preferred area of practice or to drive y dollars
in revenue by end of year, your plan will also help you determine how
many of these marketing activities will need to happen (and at what
frequency they must happen) to make your goals a reality.

5. Implement your plan before the ink dries
In fact, start implementing even before you finish the plan.

6. Bonus Tip (from me): Involve Marketing Professionals

Marketing professionals bring objectivity, understanding of the
marketplace and an assortment of strategic and creative skills to any
law firm marketing initiative.

But perhaps most importantly, marketing professionals can help law
firms to identify and clearly articulate their authentic identities and
strengths. They then can work with us to translate these articulated
strengths into marketing initiatives aimed at building the kinds of
practices we all genuinely aspire toward.

It’s not quite as simple as “if you build it they will come,” perhaps.

But if you build it and market it appropriately and professionally – and
your firm delivers the quality of service it promises to deliver – you
are likely to have a very successful career in the practice of law.

For the professional practice of today, I’d suggest, marketing has
become one of the necessary – and unavoidable – components of such
success.

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered National Money Mart Company to pay $30,000 in compensation to a former, one-year employee of the company who had been subjected to ongoing, serious sexual harassment by her workplace supervisor.

With the Ontario Court of Appeal's June 25, 2009 ruling in Slepenkova v. Ivanov, it is now clear that the nearly-universal pronouncements by management lawyers as to the death of Wallace damages after Honda and Keays may have been a bit premature.

In Slepenkova, the Ontario appellate court upheld a two-month notice extension for an employer's bad faith termination, even though no evidence was led at trial as to the specific damages the employee directly incurred as a result of the bad faith. This appeared to place the trial Judge's decision at odds with the new Wallace test set out in Honda.

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Wise Law Blogfeatures timely articles on legal developments in Canada and the United States, along with commentary on Canadian politics, American politics, technology and noteworthy current affairs.

Launched on April 5, 2005, Wise Law Blog also highlights key decisions of Canadian courts, with focus on Ontario Family Law, Ontario Employment Law and other areas of interest.

Garry J. Wise is primary contributor to Wise Law Blog. He is a Canadian litigation lawyer who practices with Wise Law Office,Toronto. He is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1986.

Garry's colleagues at Wise Law Office, as well as occasional guest bloggers, also contribute to Wise Law Blog.

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